59 Channels and Counting

May 13, 2006

Television

Last year during the Winter Olympics, we got cable television. We got it specifically so we could watch the Winter Olympics, but it is also nice to be able to watch two news programs in English. We absolutely DO NOT like BBC news – it is very anti-American and very anti-British and very anti-Israel (actually, I’m not sure they are for anything or anyone, but are just a bunch of old sour pusses gloating over the day’s bad news). But other than that, it is very nice to listen to something that is actually in a language we can understand 100% of the time (usually – sometimes the British usage of words can throw us, or even the pronunciation – what ever happened to the letter R in Britain, anyway???). Mel actually calls BBC “The Beat Bush Channel” or “The Beat Blair Channel,” depending on whichever one the reporters are going after at that particular moment. Either way, BBC fits. The other channel is Deutche Welle, or DW. It is from Germany and alternates English and German every other hour. Sometime during the evening they do an hour in Spanish, or at least they used to do so. We enjoy listening to DW a lot more than BBC, even though we are not that interested in German politics, and of course, DW tends to just be full of German news and not very much international news. Hmmm – I wonder why?

There are several music video channels on our cable tv (59 channels total). And one Christian channel which goes by the funny initials of CNL, which we have a tendency to read partly in Russian and partly in English, so it comes out SNL, which of course makes us think of Saturday Night Live and to be honest – we don’t see much difference. It doesn’t help that it’s all either in Russian or voiced over into Russian and the Copelands are on all the time, or so it seems (why does everyone’s hair look like a bad wig?).

We also get Polish National Geographic Channel, voiced over into Russian, so all of the commercials and writing are in Polish, the language of the show is English voiced over into Russian – a very international channel all in all. We get a French channel that is in French for some reason. :) We also get MegaSport Channel and EuroSport Channel. Sometimes, early in the day, EuroSport is in English which thrills Mel. However, neither one of us are really into European Football, known in the States as soccer. It is a very serious sport here, though – taken much more seriously than is the NFL in the States.

I had been gone one evening, and when I returned Mel told me I really needed to see this new ad that is on several of the channels. (As a typical MALE type person, he does a lot of channel surfing.) He told me he was shocked when he saw it because it was so sudden. A nice little ad for a cream in a little white jar. He didn’t pay much attention to it until they showed what it is for. While “letting it all hang out” (can you tell I am a child of the ‘60’s?), a pretty young woman rubs the cream in all over her breast. The announcer lets us know that basically nature doesn’t know what it’s doing and therefore women need to buy this miracle cream that will give them a “perfecktni boost.” A Perfect Bust. Oh my. And it doesn’t come off in the shower either, they showed us so! I’m sure thousands of women all over Ukraine and other Russian speaking countries are buying it up by the truckload, rubbing it on their chests and wondering whatever happened to their perfecktni boost.

The funniest ad that we have seen took us awhile to understand. It was an ad for a workout machine, you know, something like the Bowflex ads on American television. We both started laughing, however, when we realized what the name of the machine was: Eenstant A. B. S. My first thought was, I wonder what A. B. S. stands for? Anti-lock Braking System? Absolutely Beautiful Skin. All Body Spots. Annoying Body Stretcher. Eenstant A. B. S. What is so funny about that, you ask? Well, it wasn’t until we actually watched the ad, not just listened to it, that we understood what they were trying to sell. A machine named “Instant Abs” written there on the screen in plain English. Apparently the word, “abs” meant nothing to the translators, so they just called it by it’s English “name,” with a Russian accent: Eenstant A.B.S.

Soon after we arrived in Ukraine eight years ago, some kind soul sent us a couple boxes of taped television programs from the States. We have all of the old Hawaii 5-O shows, and a bunch of Murder She Wrote and Diagnosis Murder tapes. And 18 tapes of Babylon 5. Mel was not too thrilled with the first tape of Babylon 5 and they all got boxed up and pushed under a bed in our spare room for the next 5 or 6 years. While Mel was gone a month ago I went searching for them, found them and we’ve been watching a couple shows each night. Babylon 5 actually got better in the second or third season – but it never became Star Trek, that’s for sure. However, I much prefer watching Aliens running around space stations out in the middle of the cosmos, than watching Perfecktni Boost.

Maybe I’m strange – but that’s ok!